Department for Education

Schools: Buildings

Bridget Phillipson: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reasons the Condition Data Collection survey between 2017 and 2019 did not consider issues of (a) structural safety and (b) hazardous construction materials.

Bridget Phillipson: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to (a) assess safety and (b) mitigate risks in system-built schools and other educational premises that are past their design lifespan.

Bridget Phillipson: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish the names and locations of all school buildings that she has assessed as past their design lifespan.

Nick Gibb: It is the responsibility of those who run schools - academy trusts, Local Authorities and voluntary-aided school bodies - to manage the safety and maintenance of their schools and to alert the Department if there is a serious concern with a building. It has always been the case that, where the Department is made aware of a building that may pose an immediate risk, immediate action is taken.The Condition Data Collection (CDC) programme was the first ever comprehensive survey of the school estate. Previous administrations took no action to understand the condition of the school estate. Running from 2017 to 2019, the survey allowed the Department to understand the condition of the school estate over time and informed capital funding and programmes by providing information on the condition of all 22,000 government funded school buildings and 260 further education colleges in England. During the time the CDC1 programme was nearing completion the first RAAC panel failed in a school in October 2018. Amendments to the successor programme CDC2 were implemented to monitor the presence of RAAC where it was visible or known to the school. The data collection started in early 2021.The CDC programme was not designed to examine structural safety or hazardous substances or materials. The programme was designed to assess the relative condition of building fabric and mechanical and electrical systems through a consistent, visual survey to inform the allocation of capital funding to where it is most needed. A CDC survey does not replace the responsible body’s responsibility in meeting statutory requirements regarding health and safety.The effective life expectancy of individual buildings can be improved by regular inspections, maintenance and upgrades over time. That is why the Department has a ten year rebuilding programme, with the aim to rebuild or refurbish school buildings in the poorest condition or with significant safety issues. It was only since 2010, with the Priority School Building Programme and its successors, that building condition was made a driver for schools to be chosen for rebuilding.The Department follows Health and Safety Executive guidance on building safety issues and monitors reports from Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures, the Institution of Structural Engineers, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors for any bulletins on safety that may impact the school estate.Two system-built designs, Laingspan and Intergrid, have been found as having systemic risks. The Department has proactively identified these buildings, and the blocks in question have already been included in the School Building Programme, which is transforming 500 schools across the country over the next decade. Responsible bodies are given the support required to ensure the safety of pupils, staff, and the general public through appropriate mitigation means, including propping and building closure where required.As part of our ongoing proactive approach, the Department is planning a research study on other system build types to examine if there are other potential systemic issues that are not yet identified by current best practices.The Department supports schools in a number of ways. This includes significant capital funding and providing guidance and support to help schools and responsible bodies manage their buildings effectively.The Department has allocated over £15 billion for improving the condition of schools since 2015, including £1.8 billion committed this financial year. The School Rebuilding Programme will also transform buildings at 500 schools over the next decade, prioritising schools in poor condition and delivering new buildings which are net carbon zero in operation. The Department has announced 400 schools to date, including 239 in December 2022. In 2022/23, the Department announced an additional £500 million in funding to improve buildings at schools and colleges, prioritising energy efficiency. Up to £635 million over the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years has been made available through the public sector decarbonisation scheme for installing low carbon heating and energy efficiency measures in public buildings, with a minimum of 30% going to schools and colleges.Where the Department is alerted to significant safety issues with a building, that cannot be managed within local resources, the Department considers additional support on a case by case basis.

Schools: Repairs and Maintenance

Munira Wilson: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to Question 44 of the oral evidence given by her Department's Chief Operating Officer to the Committee of Public Accounts on 13 July 2023, HC1338, for what reason her Department has not published the full results of the Condition Data Collection 1 survey.

Munira Wilson: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to Question 44 of the oral evidence given by her Department's Chief Operating Officer to the Committee of Public Accounts on 13 July 2023, HC 1338, when she plans to publish the full results of the Condition Data Collection 1 survey.

Nick Gibb: The full school level data from the first Condition Data Collection programme was published in the House Libraries on 20 July 2023. This is accessible at: https://depositedpapers.parliament.uk/depositedpaper/2285521/details.It is the responsibility of academy trusts, Local Authorities, and voluntary aided school bodies, who work with the schools they run to manage the safety and maintenance of their schools, to alert the Department if there is a serious concern with a building.If the Department is made aware of a building that poses serious imminent risks to the safety of pupils or staff, immediate action is taken to ensure their safety and remediate the situation. There are no open areas within schools or college buildings where the Department knows of an imminent risk to life.The Department helps responsible bodies to meet their responsibilities by providing significant capital funding for their schools, delivering rebuilding programmes and providing guidance and support. The Department has allocated over £15 billion since 2015 for keeping school buildings safe and in good working order, including £1.8 billion committed for 2023/24. In addition, the School Rebuilding Programme will transform buildings at 500 schools, prioritising poor condition and potential safety issues.The Condition Data Collection (CDC) data helps the Department understand the condition of the school estate in England and how it is changing over time, and the data is part of the evidence base used to make school condition funding allocations.CDC was one of the largest data collection programmes in the UK public sector.The data was collected between 2017/19 and reflects a visual snapshot of the estate as it was and therefore does not reflect the current condition of the school buildings. In May 2021, the Department published the key findings of the CDC programme in the report ‘Condition of School Buildings Survey – Key Findings’, which can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/989912/Condition_of_School_Buildings_Survey_CDC1_-_key_findings_report.pdf. The report provides school condition data at national and regional level.

Home Office

Home Office: Social Media

Emily Thornberry: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Minister of State for Security (a) sought and (b) received any formal advice concerning the retention of data on his social media accounts before the decision to delete every post prior to 15 December 2022 from his account on the social media site Twitter but not from his accounts on the social media sites (i) Instagram and (ii) Facebook.

Tom Tugendhat: Ministers are not required to take advice when choosing to make changes to their social media accounts. As such, the Home Office holds no relevant information.

Ministry of Justice

Prisoners: Drugs

Jessica Morden: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many drug overdoses took place in prisons from March (a) 2021-2022 and (b) 2022-2023 broken down by institution.

Damian Hinds: Between January 2021 and December 2021, a total of 2,273 incidents of self-harm were recorded that were linked to overdoses.The total figure for January 2022 to December 2022 was 2,387 incidents linked to overdoses. Please see the accompanying table.The data has been produced on a calendar basis to match published figures on method of self-harm. Information is reported for calendar rather than financial years to avoid the risk of identifying individuals in combination with published calendar year breakdowns of self-harm data.We do not explicitly collect data on an “overdose” incident type. The data we have provided is based on the “self-harm” incident type. In particular, the data is based on self-harm categorised as “Self-Poisoning/Overdose/Substances/Swallowing” and subcategorised as “illegal drugs”, “own persons medicine” or “other persons medicine”.The data provided is based on two main assumptions:Incidents relate to the consumption of substances, including illegal drugs and prescription medication.Incidents were judged by staff to be incidents of self-harm, i.e. where a prisoner deliberately harmed themselves.There will be other incidents involving the consumption of substances that are not included as they were not reported as self-harm by the prison and so would not have been captured in the provided data.These figures have been drawn from the HMPPS Incident Reporting System and although care is taken when processing and analysing returns, the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. Although shown to the last case, the figures may not be accurate to that level.The data only includes self-harm incidents collated centrally; identifying any wider incidents that lead to a hospitalisation and have a connection to drugs would exceed the cost threshold as it would require reading through the text of each incident.We are committed to doing all we can to prevent deaths from drug overdoses in prison. We have outlined in both our Prisons Strategy White Paper and the Government’s 10-year drug strategy ‘From Harm to Hope’ (2021) how we will achieve this.All prisons have a zero-tolerance approach to drugs. Our £100m Security Investment Programme, completed in March 2022, introduced measures such as 75 additional X-ray body scanners and airport-style gate security. To prevent the smuggling of illegal drugs such as psychoactive substances through the mail, we have deployed 95 next generation drug trace detection machines. We are aiming for full coverage of public sector prisons by March 2024.We are also increasing the number of Incentivised Substance-Free Living units, where prisoners commit to remaining free of illicit drugs with regular drug testing and incentives. We have more than doubled the number of these from 25 last summer to 60 now and we are aiming to reach up to 100 by March 2025.199321_table (xlsx, 22.6KB)